KITCHENER — Something extraordinary happens in the Inside-Out classroom every time a new class sits down together for the first time.

There's always the initial awkwardness of a roomful of people meeting for the first time.

That's amplified because the class takes place in a federal prison, and half of the students are inmates there.

Randell Duguid was a social work student in the first such class in Canada, in the fall of 2011. Some students felt a bit nervous about being in a prison, working with inmates, she said. Some inmates worried the university students would be spoiled rich kids who might judge them.

But everyone sits in a circle, and icebreaker exercises soon have everyone talking, she said. "And people start connecting that we're all learners together."

Lorraine, 47, was serving a four-year sentence for fraud at Kitchener's Grand Valley Institution and had already taken some university correspondence courses when she heard about Inside-Out.

That chance to see herself as a learner, working with other learners, was very important, said the mother, whose surname is not being used.

"Society makes you out to be an abnormal person because you have committed a crime," Lorraine said. "You are labelled. To be in a group of people that have not committed crimes, who are upstanding citizens, and for you to find out, 'Geez, I can't believe we have so much in common. I'm not abnormal,' that means a lot."

Tiina, 40, said the two Inside-Out courses she took were "an amazing, awesome experience," definitely the most positive, life-changing thing that happened to her during her six years' incarceration.

Though she had been active on prison committees, she said she was very nervous about dealing with anyone outside prison, and worried about how she would cope when she was released.

"In prison, you lose yourself, and you lose your voice," said Tiina, whose surname is not being used. But through the contact she had at Inside-Out, "I gained a lot of my confidence back — a huge amount."

Today she has a B.A., is working two part-time jobs in Toronto and studying counselling. She is a seasoned and confident public speaker, thanks largely to her Inside-Out experience.

Inside-Out began in 1997 in Pennsylvania, when Paul Perry, who was serving a life sentence, found a panel discussion he took part in with students so stimulating that he asked the teacher to run a semester-long class.

At the core of the program is the belief that if people inside and outside of prison meet to study, collaborate and analyze challenging social issues together, they will grow as individuals, and start to think about social change and what role they could play in building better communities.

The classes aren't born out of some desire to "help" the inmates, but from the belief that every student in the class has something to learn, and to contribute.

Simone Davis was involved in the program in the U.S., so when she moved back to Canada she contacted Shoshana Pollack, a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University whose work on women in prison she had admired for years.

"I just reached out to her, cold," said Davis. Pollack readily agreed, and in fall 2011, Laurier hosted the first Inside-Out classes in Canada. Ten social work students and seven inside students began meeting weekly at the federal women's prison for a course called Diversity, Marginalization and Oppression.

Lorraine was drawn by the course topic. "I spent a lot of time trying to find me, and figure out what happened in my life. That was what really caught me — it offered me a way to find out about myself."

Lorraine has continued with her learning, taking courses by correspondence as well as working full-time at a non-profit in Toronto. She now has more than half the credits she needs to complete her B.A.

Pollack, Davis and Duguid, who was a social work student in that first class, now run the Inside-Out program in Canada out of Laurier's faculty of social work in downtown Kitchener.

Laurier has offered eight different courses, for university credit, on topics as varied as human rights in a globalized world, families, literature and oppression.

In 2013, thanks to funding from the Lyle S. Hallman Foundation, Laurier became the Canadian training centre for instructors interested in setting up Inside-Out programs. So far, 34 trainers from across the country have taken the five-day training.

Inside-Out classes are strikingly different than an ordinary university class, not only because of where they take place and the kinds of students they attract, but also in the way they're designed, Duguid said.

There's a lot of emphasis on dialogue and collaboration — all students are full participants and help lead the class.

Inside-Out has T-shirts that read, "Breaking down the walls that separate us," and that's exactly what happens in the classroom, Davis said. "People work together in really meaningful and authentic ways," she said. "They start to understand each other and themselves and the society in which they live in pretty novel ways."

Many of the university-based students crave "a real, deep connection between their lived experience and the assigned text," Davis said. "There's an enormous hunger for that, that is often unmet in a conventional classroom."

But that sort of thing happens all the time in an Inside-Out classroom, they said, as students share often very personal connections with the material they're studying.

Sometimes, the class makes a light bulb go off for a student, Davis said. "They get seized with an intellectual hunger."

Some inside students find the work quite challenging, as they tackle up to four readings a class by writers such as French philosopher Michel Foucault. Students with just a high school diploma were encountering words and concepts they'd never seen before, Lorraine said, but were determined to succeed and could be seen labouring through the texts, dictionaries at the ready.

Past students have banded together to form the Walls to Bridges Collective, which meets every two weeks to work on community development, plan workshops and other social justice work. The group also plays a big role in training new instructors.

The classes are just as rigorous academically, Davis said. "Everyone is marked using the same criteria."

The three Inside-Out courses Duguid took "were as hard or harder (than conventional classes) because you can't just skim an article and feel you can get by … You come way more prepared, because you want to actively participate."

The classes pose particular challenges.

Incarcerated students have little to no money for textbooks, supplies or tuition. Laurier provides texts and has bursaries to cover tuition. Students must have high school equivalency, or are accepted under the same criteria used with any non-traditional student.

Another big barrier is inmates' lack of access to the internet, which can severely limit inside students' ability to do research.

It's also more work, for the instructor, who must hold office hours twice — in prison and out — and has to be more flexible, coming up with alternative ways of teaching, because sometimes the students themselves may take the discussion in an unexpected direction.

Lorraine is convinced that classes like Inside-Out are the biggest deterrent to an inmate slipping back into crime upon their release.

"I think most people commit crimes out of ignorance," she said. "The more knowledgeable you are about what is going on in society, the more you can identify where you are in society. I think that means a lot."